Leftovers

After dyeing all the wool for the Blugly sweater (which, consequently, I will be knitting for the rest of my life), we had some left over. The wool has actually been not-so-pleasant to spin. First, it's full of vegetable matter. That's "VM" in spinning jargon, and in this case it means that someone mowed a field in New Zealand and dumped all of the clippings on their sheep before they sheared it and sent the wool off to be sold in the U.S., to me, so I'm constantly picking picking picking picking out tiny burrs and pieces of hay. Also, it doesn't like to draft; it likes to stick to itself and pill up and fight me. But, the resulting yarn was worth it and I learned a lot about Making Wool Submit To My Will from it. And it's such pretty gray, I thought maybe I'd just spin the rest of it up undyed. Then I thought, maybe I could just dye it a little bit, but leave some of the natural gray to be enjoyed. So that's what I did.

First I soaked the wool and mixed up some colors. I did this at random, having one idea when I started making up koolaid/food coloring colors and then changed my mind several times.
Here's the soggy wool, laid out on plastic wrap:
Here's my hand, wearing gloves this time, applying koolaid to the wool:
Didn't get a picture of the plastic-wrapped wool cooking in the microwave, but here's the next step, washing the dyed wool in the sink:
And here's some of the finished, dry wool, all wound up, ready to pre-draft and spin:
I've started spinning it already, instead of finishing the Blugly sweater, and I have to admit I'm enchanted with it. The colors looks so different in yarn form! I've only got 1.5 bobbins done; I'm going to do a third and then 3-ply it with my new tensioned-lazy-kate. I can't wait to see it plied!

SIGH

I'm starting to think there really is a worldwide conspiracy to keep me from updating my blog. Last night I took a bunch of photos of the very wee bit I have accomplished over the past month and then, while uploading them to my computer, the computer crashed and wouldn't stop loading random updates and I gave up and ran off to spin even though I felt guilty because I SHOULD have been cleaning and then two hours later the computer was frozen on the "loading update 1 of 1, if you turn your computer off it will never work again and everyone will hate you" Windows screen, but I hardbooted it and finally got it to cooperate but then I forgot to make sure my photos had actually uploaded and then put them on flickr so I could access them and so...all I have to show for myself this morning is THIS:
A thumbnail sneak preview of some predyed wool I'd bought awhile back at the now online shop Cottage Fiber. This wool is now yarn, but all you get is a photo of the prepped fiber ready to spin.
Also, here is a picture of Mickie taking a bubble bath. He is neither spinning or knitting while in the bathtub, but these are the only two photos I had handy.

Not Abandoned...

I haven't abandoned my blog, I promise! I've just been busy. And lazy. Very, very lazy. But I have amassed some new stuff to show off, as soon as I get some good photos taken.

Also, if he were REALLY a superhero, wouldn't his name be IronING Man? SuperMARKET Man? And my mom wants to know where BatHROOMCLEANING Man is. Where, indeed! (I should talk - like I'm just a real freakin' success at housekeeping.)

Cotton

Yeah, I know - I'm not a good blogger. But I had stuff to do. For example, before I ever read on the internet that there are a thousand reasons that cotton can't be spun by a beginner or without a high-speed wheel, I bought this cute little cotton sampler at Cottage Fiber. (Which, sadly, is closing up shop here in KC but will be setting up an online store, so I highly encourage all of you to take up knitting and spinning and give your business to our friends here: www.cottagefiber.com)
Anyway, I bought this kit, and began spinning it. Took some time; there were a lot of embarrassing mishaps before I figured out how to make it work, but eventually I bent it to my will.

See? That's will-bending, right there, that is.

And here's the final two ply. I bought some inexpensive Lion Brand cotton to go with it, since I only ended up with one skein (from two cotton kits plied together, actually).

I'm not actually sure what to make with it yet. We found a good hat pattern, but now I'm not so sure. I think I'll put up a new poll!

Headline News: World Conspires to Keep Girl From Spinning

Well, TAKE THAT, world. TAKE THAT: I know. It's more of the same old stuff. Here we have the final ME2, ready to be Navajo plied, the second skein of ME2, and some plied Blugly ready to be washed. I have two more bits of Blugly to spin up and then my spinning wheel will get to do something NEW. Probably I will spin up the rest of that Fishguts wool my mom dyed, and then spin the remaining bits of wool I'd bought to practice with. Then, for real, on to something new!

Just so everyone knows, there are NO PETS allowed in our laundry room. The laundry room is a pet-hair-free zone. Thank goodness there are NO PETS in this laundry room:
On another random aside, I noticed this label on a pizza box this weekend:
Wow. This economy is bringing EVERYBODY down.

Yarn Brand Idea

Jennifer has decided to collect photos of Unfortunate House Colors, and has even dedicated an imaginary line of yarn to this theme. Yesterday, she designed this lovely ad:
I'm so proud!

Sock Karma

I probably should not have congratulated myself on how well those socks fit Jennifer yesterday. Why? After four hours of intensive knitting last night, I accomplished THIS:

Not only is it very blurry, but it is not very much knitting. I started this sock toe over - and I am not lying, exaggerating or pathologically embellishing - SEVENTEEN times. Why, you ask? Corners.

Okay, see how, with this toe-up sock, there are little corners sticking up where it was first cast on?
With the yarn I used for these socks, the yarn is kind of thin and light and pliable, so those little corners are only visually annoying and hopefully do not cause discomfort to Jennifer's little toes. However, the sock yarn I'm using now is thicker and those corners - which were HUGE in my first few casting on attempts - would feel like hard knots under the toes. Just thinking about those corners poking around in my shoes gives me the shudders. Oh, and also, the WHOLE FREAKING POINT of hand knit socks is that they are super comfy in the toes because they don't have seams, as opposed to manufactured socks.

I thought that maybe the corners were showing up because I was an inexperienced toe-up knitter, so I just tried redoing it until the corners went away. No dice. Then I remembered there is this thing called the Internet, so I used it to look up other people's toe-up socks. Unless the yarn was super fuzzy and forgiving, those socks had corners, too. Unfortunately, I couldn't find any solutions or even other people freaking out about sock corners on the internet, so I tried idea after idea after idea to make the corners go away, hence the seventeen tries.

Trying seventeen times didn't bother me, really. What DOES make me a little twitchy is that it took me four hours and seventeen grueling trial-and-error attempts to arrive at this solution: Pick up a couple of stitches on the edges of the cast on.

Well, duh.

I'd like to make a special apology to my mom, who called me when I was on about the 14th try. Mom, those were very naughty, impolite words and I should not have said them. You are NOT allowed to repeat them, especially in public or at the restaurant we are going to tonight.